[SoaS] [Marketing] Governance & Trademark in the Wiki

[Peter Robinson]

Hi Sean,

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 9:45 PM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> This does seem sensible, but I don't see how it will help our
> branding, unless the decision rests with us to allow a "remix" to use
> the brand name. Otherwise, we'll just fragment the brand. What will
> people doing remixes contribute to our marketing? Wouldn't it be
> better if they worked with us?

But what about quality of the product. If you have someone that does a
bad 'remix' and calls it the name that the upstream, well tested main
line product and people review that bad "Sugar on a Stick" you also
give the brand a bad name. Which then means someone needs to QA all
the various different iterations of various products that are using
SOAS to ensure the user gets a good experience and level of quality
that you would expect of the main SugarLabs SOAS. We don't have the
engineering resources to be able to do that. So your better off
allowing a remix to be be called "Blah Blah SOAS Remix" so there is
inclusion of the brand with in the name but also differentiation. So
it increases the visibility of the brand while also keeping an arms
length appart to ensure the core product doesn't lose the quality of
the Brand due to another variant that may be dodgy.

> "Remixes" are brand extensions, sometimes called "flankers", which can
> work if a brand is strong. There's not much point doing so with a weak
> brand I'm afraid. I would bet that Fedora is a better-known brand than
> Sugar Labs today, but it's still a very weak brand. (I'm sure One
> Laptop per Child is a better-known brand, which is why it would be far
> more effective for us to do joint marketing with them when they are
> ready.)

Yes, but if you have a dozen "Sugar on a Stick" variants all called
"Sugar on a Stick" but half of them are complete shit your not going
to end up with a good brand and your worse off when you started
because people have the opinion "that is crap" and you damage the core
Sugar Labs product.

> What we are trying to do with Sugar Labs is create the conditions for
> a breakout. It's not easy; if it were, everybody would be doing it
> with their brands :-) I've said before that what Sugar on a Stick
> actually *is* can evolve; it's the brand that's fragile and needs
> protection.

And you want to do that by allowing anyone to use it? That doesn't
protect it in my opinion.

Regards,
Peter